Love Note
by Mlle Inklins
Summary: Lily agonizes over how to sound even remotely romantic.


It's my birthday and I'll fanfic if I want to.

**

* * *

**

**Love Note**

Lily's got the whole two hours and twenty minutes till Potions class to figure this out. She has no idea what to say, and she supposes this is because she rarely does anyway, unless she's angry and you've really got her going; then she has no idea what she's saying at all. She frowns at the decorative tapestry hanging near the corner, brushes the end of her quill against her lips, and leans more seriously over the table. Her ink bottle is filled to the brim and the smudges have all been carefully removed from the outside of the glass with one of Lily's most trusted, most overused cleansing spells; the parchment is brand new and smells brand new. Her hair falls into her white, freckled face impossibly straight, her eyes are keen and bright green as they sweep the white sheet rolled out in front of her. She screws her lips up in a frown.

She has no idea what to say, so she's decided she's going to write this bugger instead.

(The problem is, she had no idea writing was _a lot_ like saying things.)

It is nearly spring, outside. All the trees have blossomed and most of the clouds have rolled away. The sky is endlessly, impenetrably blue. Not a single light would be able to outshine it. The grass is tall and lithe and very green, greener even than her eyes; though, she thinks, it is probably tick infested. There are probably many ant holes underneath all that green. The dirt is probably a little wet because it rained last night, and then thundered and rained some more. How many people know that it rained last night? She wonders. She only knew herself because she'd been awake and heard it. Sat on one of the windowsills, drenched in icy, alert insomnia, and watched rain water drip down the windows, thinking miserably how much she longed to be able to sink down into sleep the way the water falls upon the earth and seeps into the ground. She had been calm then.

She might have had something to say _then_. She might have written about how miserable she was and how cold the window felt and how unfair the world seemed, if only in that brief space of time. She, at least, would have thought of something to tell him that was true and meaningful. Happiness brings little revelation, and it is a curious yet unproductive depression that brings her to this conclusion. To be happy, or even to be peaceful or content, is to be boringly unreflective, to waste away time for the sake of wasting away time, to think even for a moment that your life is complete and that there is nothing left for you to discover or obtain. Happiness is to be content with the world, and satisfied with all you know about it.

Even so, Lily cannot but help feeling happy.

Maybe this is why the words do not come. Her quill remains an ineffectual part of the equation, the ink hardening around its tip like a sort of sealant. The paper is mockingly blank and loudly white. In annoyance she looks away and out the window again, and is met with the warm, speckled, delicate touch of sunlight splaying neatly between the window muntins to fall on her face. She can feel her freckles absorbing the sun just as she sits there; and really, she doesn't mind all that much. She squints.

(She has an hour and forty-eight minutes left until Potions class.)

The students outside all look hot, and are breathing heavy like the air is a little too stifling, like it's more humid than they would have appreciated. Nonetheless, they are all operating on infectious energy, laughing and smiling, flashing brilliant, happy smiles and picking gorgeous, though ridiculously overgrown flowers and sneezing with a bashful glee into their centers, watching the pollen burst and saunter through the air around them. They are for the most part relaxing. Exams are not that far off, but they are still far off enough so as not to be too quickly approaching; the students are relaxing with a clean conscious. Lily wonders how they do it. She wonders how relaxing--sitting around doing nothing and sneezing into flowers and practicing hexes on chipmunks--can be relaxing at all. For one, you are not getting a single thing done. You are just wasting time, which is the most nerve-racking thing Lily _has_ ever done. Wasting time. Even the unspoken thought sends a trembling shiver down her spine.

Staring down at her blank piece of parchment, Lily realizes she has been wasting time for--she checks her watch, covertly sneaking a glance--the past hour and thirty four minutes.

But what to say! It is no longer an exciting question.

Lily hates the stale, dwindling potential of the whole thing. She now doubts whether she will be able to write anything at all. Anger would be a better translator. Despair, even, or hurt. A deep and troubling sense of confusion, or a great injustice dealt her; only she can think of no confusion, no great injustice that he has ever dealt her, no despair ever brought about by the thought of him, no anger inspired by the looks of him. Only the blissful, idiot happiness, and the slightly unhelpful hopefulness that this will all work out in the end, and that she will get the message across to him, somehow.

For some reason she cannot write about happiness; she will not.

She now has a mere fifteen minutes.

Rubbing the dried ink off the quill tip with her fingers, Lily pulls a strand of red hair behind her left ear, curling it around the curve of her ear, securing it firmly into place. She does not fancy getting her hair stained with the ink. In wholly unromantic, crude scrapings, she etches a very short message into the paper, and robs it of its arrogance, claiming triumph over it at long last.

She writes:

_Remus--_

_I know about your secret._

_Meet me by the lake if you want to talk some more about it. I'll be there after class, whether it'll be to wait for you or not. I would enjoy getting the chance to talk to you alone._

_--Lily_

She passes it to him during Potions class, while James and Sirius are busy duking it out with Snape over the last heart of some great beast, both sides unwilling to use the lesser heart in their potion, and eager to make the other use it instead. They do not notice her. Shrinking back to her seat, Lily notices that her steps are unsteady, and that she feels suddenly a little lightheaded.


End file.
